Last Sunday we went to a football match in Bilbao. I was really excited because i wanted to go there for a long time already. Because I work in the EITB and the building is next to the football stadium we always here and see the supporters. The atmosphere in the city is always so amazing. When Bilbao scores we can hear the people shouting and celebrating.

A friend of a another Erasmus student arranged tickets for us. Normally the tickets cost 48 euro’s. And of course that is to much money for us, but we got two free tickets and the rest of the money we splitted. He arranged the tickets because his friend plays in Athletic Bilbao. Very nice all the connections here. :p

So we went. Outside the stadium there were a lot of people. Everybody was dressed in white with red striped shirts. The thing I noticed the first was that there is almost no police on the streets. If there is a football match in Holland the ME team is always stand-by. I like that a lot.

Before we went in Wilco had to interview a view people for his project. This was great because people like to talk about the love for their club. With a beer in their hand they were singing the Athletic Bilbao song in front of the camera.

Because the tickets we had were not in the same places in the stadium, Wilco and I went in together. We had great seats, three rows from the field. Because there is no roof on the stadium it was really cold, but it seemed that nobody thought this was a big problem.

A lot of people brought their own sandwiches and pipa’s. Everybody was eating them. The women in the line in front of us used it as a stress agent. That was really amusing to look at. We were close to the box were you can find the die-hard fans. They were singing and shouting the whole match.

The reason why we were there was to see the reaction of the people when Athletic would score. And also to jump ourselves! But unfortunately the match wasn’t that exciting. They played without a lot of action and Wilco and I were really afraid that they were not going to score. But in the last minute of the match it happened…. Athletic scored. The crowd was going crazy, and we jumped along. Finally, because it was really cold and we could use some movement. It was great especially because everybody was waiting for the goal such a long time. Eeverybody was shouting ‘GOAL, GOAL, GOAL’. If the stadium would have a roof it would go off!

After the match we met the other people outside the stadium, luckily we had a car, otherwise we had to leave the stadium earlier to catch the last bus. We had to stand In line in front of the ticket automat but that was oke. The match was great and certainly worth repeating.